Advent Calendar - December 16 - Robert Montcalm

An actor's dreams and doubts Advent Calendar proudly presents - December 16 - Robert Montcalm from Canada. Robert has qualities that the rest of us dream of. He is ambitious, focused and great to work with. He is a sweetheart. The word is his.

A dialogue of bodies in motion.

There is almost nothing so fascinating as the unspoken story told between two people. I specialize in theatrical movement, or so I would categorize my approach to acting. I'm a Fight Director who approaches choreography the same way that a Writer approaches a text. I ask all the questions that are necessary for a fight or story, most importantly – Is this just in for effect or does it serve a purpose?

You see, a fight for me is not merely about flash – a series of actions made for an audience to be impressed by skill. Much more than that, I choreograph movements that connect to emotions and the broader story. For me a fight results from the boiling over of events that have taken place and must therefore relate to everything that has come before and influence everything that will go after.

A slap is not simply that, a slap.

I can give the same mechanical action to a hundred different actors and they will each do it differently, whether by small margins or great liberties of their own expression. As Jacqueline McClintock used to tell us, a hundred actors go in for a part, they only call back a few – they all had the same text, so what made those few special?

You have to live a fight the same way that you live a text, a dance, a song. It isn't enough to simply feel something in acting, as actors we have to show it, and when you are forced to do a choreography there isn't much stopping you from showing - living in the moment - other than being in your head about what comes next...

Being in your head.

Boy is it comfortable to be up there, that safe little bubble where you're free to direct yourself and miss everything else that's going on around you... but it sucks at the end of the day, when you realize that you haven't so much been on stage as you've been off in your own mind... and the audience saw it too, whether they knew what it was or not.

There is a difficulty here that is the same for memorizing text as it is for fighting and it's this – you must know your lines well enough to do them backwards, upside down, turned around and inside out (or any variation thereof). The challenge with being free enough to show your emotions in a text is made all the more difficult in a fight, when you know that if you swing too early your partner might very well lose an eye. So where is the balance?

Being present, connected, with the person across from you.

As an actor being alone on stage when your partner is right in front of you is an awful feeling, made all the worse when they are brandishing a weapon. So how do you get around this, in fighting we build in cues that the body and muscles train themselves in response to, the same way that if someone suddenly tossed you a chocolate bar you would instinctively grab it out of the air (I use chocolate as an example because... well, it's chocolate and shouldn't need more explanation).

Once you lay the ground work for movements to be free, actors can actually be in the moment, in place of just moving to a choreography, the same way they can live a text truthfully once they no longer have to think of what comes next. If the fight choreography is done well, there should always be moments of discovery to be played, and when you're connected with your partner the audience will not fear for the safety of the actor that you're fighting but they sure as hell might fear for the character across from you.

If you're interested.

I'm a certified Advanced Actor Combatant and serve as the Combatant Representative on the Board of Directors for Fight Directors Canada. If anyone is interested in certifying in stage and film combat there is a 2 week intensive in 2013 in Montreal! I'll be certifying to become an Instructor (I will have completed a 3 year apprenticeship under Canadian Fight Master Jean-François Gagnon.

For more information, please visit: http://www.fdc.ca/academy/

This is one of the greatest experiences that I think an actor can have and I would love it if even one person reading this blog registers.

December 16